OT: Dern, that Liberal Media

Deadline Hollywood
They Shoot News Anchors, Don’t They?
Media moguls, not looters, killed Katrina’s truth tellers
by NIKKI FINKE



At first, only CNN appeared not to have thoroughly read the proverbial
memo. It was the only network, on air and on its Web site, to compare
and contrast the wildly contradictory statements by federal, state and
local officials, sometimes within hours, but often within minutes of
each other. It was CNN that posted the first full transcript of New
Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s profanity- and passion-filled September 2
interview on local radio. It was also CNN that first exposed the
gruesome nature of the conditions at the Superdome, at the convention
center and in the hospital corridors. Its broadcasters were the first
to keep a heart-wrenching online blog during Katrina. Even as late as
September 6, political correspondent Ed Henry was the first to counter
the claims by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that local officials and
not the feds were to blame, by reporting that congressional
Republicans, in a secret confab, were giving the Bush administration a
big fat F.

Then the fix was in.

On September 8, CNN anchorette Kyra Phillips was chewing into House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for “continuing to criticize the
administration, and criticize the director of FEMA... I think it’s
unfair that FEMA is just singled out. There are so many people
responsible for what has happened in the state of Louisiana.”

Instead of smiling through clenched teeth, the San Francisco Democrat
bit back: “I’m sorry that you think it’s unfair. But I don’t .
.. . If you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on
their payroll.”

By September 12, even the White House admitted that FEMA had been its
own disaster area by pushing out its Arabian-horseman-turned-jackass
head, Michael Brown. (Bush finally admitted on Tuesday that the buck
was going to stop with him whether he liked it or not. “To the extent
the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take
responsibility,” he said.) That same day, CNN’s parent company,
Time Warner, announced the hiring of DeLay’s chief of staff as a top
Washington lobbyist. This news, and its timing, prompted Jeff Chester
of the Center for Digital Democracy to tell the L.A. Weekly: “Time
Warner aligning itself with the right-wing DeLay machine should send
shudders [down] CNN and HBO. Clearly, TW wants DeLay insurance so it
won’t have to face cable-ownership safeguards, а la carte rules and
broadband non-discrimination policies.”

For the first 120 hours after Hurricane Katrina, TV journalists were
let off their leashes by their mogul owners, the result of a rare
conjoining of flawless timing (summer’s biggest vacation week) and
foulest tragedy (America’s worst natural disaster). All of a sudden,
broadcasters narrated disturbing images of the poor, the minority, the
aged, the sick and the dead, and discussed complex issues like poverty,
race, class, infirmity and ecology that never make it on the air in
this swift-boat/anti-gay-marriage/Michael Jackson media-sideshow era.
So began a perfect storm of controversy.

Contrary to the scripture so often quoted in these areas of Louisiana
and Mississippi, the TV newscasters knew the truth, but the truth did
not set them free. Because once the crisis point had passed, most TV
journalists went back to business-as-usual, their choke chains yanked
by no-longer-inattentive parent-company bosses who, fearful of fallout
from fingering Dubya for the FEMA fuckups, decided yet again to
sacrifice community need for corporate greed. Too quickly, Katrina’s
wake was spun into a web of deceit by the Bush administration, then
disseminated by the Big Media boys’ club. (Karl Rove spent the
post-hurricane weekend conjuring up ways to shift blame.)


If big media look like they’re propping up W’s presidency, they
are. Because doing so is good for corporate coffers — in the form of
government contracts, billion-dollar tax breaks, regulatory relaxations
and security favors. At least that wily old codger Sumner Redstone,
head of Viacom, parent company of CBS, has admitted what everyone
already knows is true: that, while he personally may be a Democrat,
“It happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do
believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies
than a Democratic one.”

When it comes to NBC’s parent company, GE’s No. 1 and No. 2,
Jeffrey Immelt and Bob Wright, are avowed Republicans, as are Time
Warner’s *** Parsons (CNN) and News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch (Fox
News Channel). (Forget that Murdoch’s No. 2, Peter Chernin, and
Redstone’s co–No. 2, Les Moonves, are avowed Democrats — it’s
meaningless because Murdoch and Redstone are the owners.)

Once upon a time, large corporations and their executives typically
avoided any public discussion of their politics because partisan
positions alienated customers and employees. But all of that changed
after GE bought NBC in 1986. For seemingly eons, Immelt’s
predecessor, the legendary Jack Welch, was a rabid right-winger who
boasted openly about helping turn former liberals Chris Matthews and
Tim Russert into neocons. (And Los Angeles Representative Henry Waxman
is still waiting for GE to turn over those in-house tapes that would
prove once and for all whether Welch, in 2000, ordered his network and
cable stations to reverse course and call the election for Bush instead
of Gore.)

As for Immelt, he publicly wishes his MSNBC could be a clone of FNC.
Not surprising, since he let his network and cable news cheerlead the
run-up to the Iraqi war without ever bothering to tell viewers GE had
billions in contracts pending. More than half of Iraq’s power grid is
GE technology. It was also under Immelt that GE installed a former
adviser to W and Condi, who also served as press secretary to former
first lady Barbara “Let ’em eat cake” Bush, as NBC Universal’s
executive vice president of communications.

And let’s not forget that in October 2004, the Republican-controlled
House and Senate and White House okayed a $137 billion corporate-tax
bill — dubbed “No Lobbyist Left Behind” — that gave a huge $8
billion tax break to GE, which had bankrolled a record $17 million
lobbying effort for it. (Meanwhile, in that same bill, House
Republicans at the last minute stripped the movie studios of about $1
billion worth of tax credits because of Hollywood’s near-constant
support of the Democratic Party and its candidates.)

Disney, parent company of ABC, has turned most of its extensive radio
network and owned-and-operated stations into a 24/7 orgy of right-wing
talk. (Sean Hannity is their poster boy.) Disney’s chief lobbyist,
Preston Padden, is not only one of Washington, D.C.’s most infamous
Republican lobbyists, but he used to work for Rupert Murdoch. Bush even
pleaded just days after 9/11 for Americans to “go down to Disney
World in Florida.” Meanwhile, Disney World has benefited from special
security measures, including extra protection and a federally declared
“no-flyover zone.” And let’s not forget that Michael Eisner
pulled the distribution plug on Fahrenheit 9/11.

As for Rupert Murdoch, his News Corp. continues to defy a July 2001 FCC
order requiring it to divest itself of a TV station in exchange for the
agency’s approval to buy 10 TV stations from Chris-Craft Industries
Inc. for $5.4 billion. What, Rupert worry? This W cheerleader can rest
assured that the FCC will amend its prohibition on owning broadcast
outlets and newspapers in the same market.

And lest anyone think there’s no connection between Murdoch’s
business and editorial, several news organizations have noticed a
dйtente between the New York Post and Senator Hillary Clinton because
Rupert needs congressional Democrats on News Corp.’s side to oppose a
change in the Nielsen ratings that could harm its TV stations.


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